A. B. Griswold

He was an adjunct professor at Cornell University, and amassed a large collection of Thai art and antiques at his home near Baltimore, which was opened to the public as a museum.

The OSS conducted operations in Thailand assisting the Free Thai resistance movement, and Griswold was parachuted into the country during the final stretch of the war in 1945.

He was mostly self-taught, and received guidance from French historian-archaeologist George Cœdès, Bangkok National Museum curator Luang Boribal Buribhand [th] and his friend Pierre Dupont.

[2] Griswold's early work mostly focused on stylistic analyses of the religious sculpture of Sukhothai and Lan Na, culminating in the publication of Dated Buddha Images of Northern Siam in 1957, which was controversial at the time for introducing a novel periodization approach that contradicted the traditional view.

[2] The series is regarded as a landmark study in the field, described by Thailand historian David K. Wyatt as an achievement without parallel "in all the scholarship on the epigraphy of Southeast Asia".